Michelle Ooi:
1. I noticed that some days the mind is peaceful and quiet and noting is very easy with not much effort involved and practice is a joy. However, the last 3 days of the retreat, I was overwhelmed with intense anger which lasted several days... Noting is impossible during these days as the mind has no patience whatsoever, continuous self destructive thoughts arise all day long, loud yogis will bring unwholesome thoughts.. sights of monks/any yogis will bring unwholesome thoughts... The mind does not want to note any more, it's like i ran out of gas as i practised intensely for the first 24 days ?
You probably fell back from equanimity to an earlier nana.
Michelle:
2. Pain - how does one deal with pain.. The monk's advise is yogi must sit not moving for one hour.. i tried doing this for 3 days while in equanimity, some time sitting in pain for the entire hour but the mind was completely constricted and tense at the end of the hour, albeit mindfulness/concentration was very strong...
Physical discomfort is interesting sometimes, especially to see how quite a lot of it is actually emotional reactivity. Then it becomes a question of solving that emotional reactivity, which is the point of the practice itself. But it is not necessary to push this point too far — if you are straining very hard and not getting anywhere, it's likely too far.
Michelle:
3. Sitting - Is the primary focus of sitting meditation to fucus on rising/falling ? I have difficulty with rising/falling as some days when the anger is intensely strong, the stomach is a knot, i can't feel anything here.. I ask a monk who said, you can note hearing the entire hour, not only rising/falling.. I ask another monk, he said i must note rising/falling... what to do ??
4. walking - during walking, is one to focus all of one's mind on the feet only, what about hearing ?
No. The primary focus of insight meditation is to see your experience clearly. You can begin with the breath in order to do this, and I read that one can use the breath to go all the way to stream entry and beyond, but it is more effective to change to more subtle objects in the later stages of insight (by which I mean this is what I was told, and this is what worked for me).
Michelle:
5. Is practice really so hard ? Must one use effort every single second all day long ? I feel like the mind is very constricted and tight most of the time with so much effort as it is always intensely trying to note something and not much spaciousness in the mind... Every moment of existence is suffering...
No, practice isn't so hard. You only need to use effort to go up to A&P, after that you should drop effort and focus in a different way. If your mind is constricted by the way you get to equanimity, you're doing it wrong.
6. how to get to stream entry...
I conjecture that the reason you didn't get to stream entry on this retreat, is because you're using your focus wrong when you get to equanimity.
When in the equanimity nana, you want to pay attention to the very subtle processes of the mind. Things like intention, expectation, fleeting subtle thoughts, subtle craving and aversion, sensations implying background, silence, peace, space, time... You want your attention to sustain a panoramic all-encompassing effortless clarity. The breath should've been dropped a long time ago (IMO) in exchange for the whole field of experience; if you keep trying to get a tight focus, you'll just fall back to A&P (which could be the reason you're getting strong anger after having attained to equanimity).
When sitting, pay attention to all those subtle processes that are hard to see while walking, doing your very best not to space out. When walking, work on seeing those subtle processes simultaneously with the grosser sensations that happen while walking (e.g. see intention to take the step and how that trickles down to the nerves and the muscles and how these muscles moving feels like), all in a panoramic, see-it-all-at-once, notice-the-three-characteristics way.
Mastering (or at least sufficiently sustaining) such a panoramic all-encompassing clear seeing leads to stream-entry.
Effort until A&P, bliss and focus-on-vibrations-in-the-center-of-attention until Dark Night, acceptance of the discinchronization of the periphery until equanimity, panoramic see-it-all-clearly-at-once-again-and-again until stream-entry. It's a different mode of attention for each stage, actually...